Gathering Place
Jim Shan
We need to make education
funding understandable
On June 23, 2003, Gov. Linda Lingle sent a memo to the state Department of Education that would have required the $1.6 billion DOE budget be cut by $218 million. The superintendent of schools sent a July 1 response to the governor indicating these cuts would result in layoffs of school-level personnel.
After a flurry of meetings and more memos, as of this writing, the governor is now asking for a cut of between $12 and $20 million. Most of the proposed cuts represent 18-20 percent across-the-board reductions in certain programs. Some are "exempt" from the cuts, others not.
The difference between $218 million vs. $12 million is quite startling. What is going on? How can our citizens begin to understand this process? There are so many ways to look at a budget, all seeking some valid slice of the "truth," that it is probably not surprising that the governor's new budget people might suffer an occasional fiscal mood swing of 90 percent!
A few quirks of the budget process include:
>> The overall DOE budget has grown, but looking only at the total numbers doesn't tell us if the growth is in teacher salaries (which do not directly affect whether your child has a textbook, a computer, a music program) or maintenance expenses or better programs.
>> Accountants like to keep track of the sources of funds (general funds, special funds, federal funds, revolving funds. (We get more federal funds for the No Child Left Behind programs.)
This is nice, but not helpful in knowing how we actually spend the money.
>> The Legislature divides the state DOE budget into eight major categories: 1. school-based budgeting, 2. comprehensive school support services, 3. instructional support, 4. state and district administration, 5. school support, 6. school community services, 7. physical plant operations and maintenance and 8. libraries.
This too is nice, but I defy anyone to look at these categories and tell me what they mean in terms of what money gets spent at a particular school or just where all the staff are located.
>> The DOE Web pages can tell you a little about how much might be spent at a school, but often this is just taking the large pot of money and dividing it by a formula. Very little is actually controlled or "spent" at the school level. In 2001-2 Aiea Intermediate School's per pupil allocation was $3,245.94, while Konawaena's was $7,629.87. That same year, the DOE's Consolidated Annual Financial Report says that the average per pupil cost was $8,167.31. At the same time, our public charter schools were given about $3,500 per pupil.
These numbers raise more questions than there are answers. The per pupil funding idea is catching on through the so-called Student Weighted Formula proposal, whereby we would completely change how we fund education, and each student would carry a certain budgetary level of funding, depending on whether they were somehow disadvantaged (poor, non-native English speaker, special education). This idea has been promoted by one of Hawaii's own, Dr. Bill Ouchi, now working out of California. It may be easier said than done.
Most of us ask commonsense questions: How much money does my child's school receive? Is it enough? Is it the same as that other school? How much is controlled by my school's principal? Are the teachers good? What programs are really good? How do you make a decision to cut this program vs. that one?
Somehow, we need to adopt a budget system that can be understood by the average citizen, parents, policy makers and even our own state Department of Budget and Finance. As it stands, we cannot even have an intelligent communitywide discussion about whether the public schools are adequately funded or if there is indeed too much "fat" here or there.
Jim Shon, a former state representative from Makiki, is associate director of the Hawaii Educational Policy Center, an education policy research center affiliated with the Department of Education, the University of Hawaii Colleges of Education and Arts and Sciences, and the Curriculum Research & Development Group.
